KGSnap! in Practice: a Block-based Programming Environment for Enabling Knowledge Graph Literacy

The growing availability of (linked) open data requires lay users to master how to deal with data effectively, yet SPARQL presents a barrier to leveraging data represented as knowledge graphs. As the block programming paradigm has been successfully used to teach programming skills, we demonstrate how to use KGSnap!, an extension of the block-based programming environment Snap!, to foster knowledge graph literacy among individuals lacking expertise in query languages. This work mainly focuses on the visualization and interaction aspects of KGSnap!, a visual SPARQL query builder, when experienced by users without expertise in the Semantic Web technologies. The reported experience is discussed as a learning-by-doing protocol aimed at facilitating the reproducibility and transparency of the performed evaluation. KGSnap! ease of use has been verified by 14 Snap! experts and 24 high-school learners. The findings indicate that lay users perceived it as a promising approach to acquaint themselves with knowledge graphs.